📝 New hybrid map revealed at OWCS Champions Clash

On the final day of the Champions Clash, Blizzard revealed the brand-new Overwatch map, Neon Junction, set in Tokyo, Japan. The map was also showcased live on stage in a showmatch between OWCS Japan and Team World.

On February 12, 2025, Overwatch went live with its first-ever Spotlight event and announced that two maps were in progress: Atlantic Arcology and Tokyo. One year later, on February 4, 2026, Overwatch held its second spotlight event, announcing the plan for 2026. In their roadmap, Season 3 featured updated concept art for Tokyo and a silhouette of a hero hypothesised to be oni-inspired, resembling members of the Hashimoto Clan. 

Entering the Champions Clash - live from Tokyo - it felt like the perfect time to announce these additions to Season 3, and the Overwatch dev team took time out of the final day of competition to announce the newest map and hero.

After Crazy Raccoon beat ZETA DIVISION 3-1 to open the night, host Gavin Gould-Chidester and Overwatch's Art Director Dion Sanders presented the new map in full.

Officially called Neon Junction, this map was designed by Peter Lee, on top of the rest of the Wordbuilding and design team. Tokyo is a Hybrid map, the first since Midtown and Paraiso came with Overwatch 2’s launch back in 2022. 

Neon Junction is filled to the brim with vibrant colors, neon lights, and a beautiful pink sky reminiscent of the shiti poppu (City-pop) vibes of Japanese 1990s pop music. The map is overflowing with references and homages, including a large inflatable kaiju murloc, a giant Mobile Suit, and manga and gacha shops lining its streets. One of the best references is a store that has many familiar plushies for sale, with ZETA DIVISION’s Kiriko, Tracer, and Genji plushies lining the shelves, and a large “Winton” plushy sitting behind the desk.

As you push past the shops and capture the payload, you move through the tight streets of Tokyo, escorting the payload around various tight bends and close quarters. This part of the map features a unique environmental hazard situation on an overpass above the payload. A powerful sniper position when clear, but be on the lookout for a train to run through and squish those pesky snipers if they get too comfortable. Dion Rodgers noted that King’s Row was a major inspiration for this map, with objectives closer together and a greater focus on close-quarters gameplay. 

After finishing through the tight streets, the map opens up into a Hashimoto-owned skyscraper. This is where the lore of the map becomes evident, as the payload is a storage case for anima-tech weaponry —the technology behind the Shimada’s Dragons, Kiriko’s Fox Spirit, and Mizuki’s Spirit Glaive. 

The attacking team will escort this technology directly to the Hashimoto, the Shimada’s rival clan, giving them an advantage in their bid for control in Tokyo (they allied themselves with Vendetta and Talon at the start of the year. This ties in nicely with Season 3’s new hero, likely to be a head of the Hashimoto, but we will have to wait and see when Season 3 finally launches on Tuesday, June 16th.